Book Notes: Roundup Vermont book, authors

• "Next Life Might Be Kinder" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26) is the new novel by Howard Norman of East Calais.

The book is centered around a marriage that is cut short by the wife's murder. After her death, her surviving husband, a novelist, continues to see his wife and to talk to her on visits to a beach by his Nova Scotia cottage. These conversations are set against a more fractious dialog: conversations between Sam Lattimore, the novelist, and his psychiatrist.

In his novel, Norman quotes a letter written by Chekhov: "The only question is, does the work as a whole allow one to taste the bitterness and sweetness of life." The answer, as it applies to "Next Life Might Be Kinder," is yes.

Norman, a two-time National Book Award finalist, will read at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier at 7 p.m. June 10.

It is the first book by Snyder, an antiques dealer who lives in Westchester County. Bliss made the pictures, using beautiful colors that match the time and place of the story.

The lovely story is about the arrival of Snyder's grandparents in New York City from Russia. Their life together in New York took a little time to get going, and came with a surprise or two.

• An English professor at Purdue has written a scholarly study of novelist Howard Frank Mosher's work.

James Robert Saunders is the author of "Howard Frank Mosher and the Classics: Echoes in the Vermont Writer's Works" (McFarland, $45).

Mosher has set his novels in Kingdom County, a fictional place that shares characteristics with the Northeast Kingdom, where he has lived for almost half a century. Saunders argues that the themes Mosher explores in his novels are universal, with roots in English and American literature.

In his introduction Saunders writes: "Mosher, over the course of his literary career, has drawn upon those same issues as he has placed them into the framework of a Vermont that has held on to its rural independent roots perhaps longer than most other places in America."

• Andrew Potok, a writer who lives in Montpelier, is the author of a new novel, "My Father's Keeper" (Fomite, $15). It is the story of a family that escapes Poland at the start of the war, and rebuilds their lives in this country.

Potok has been a painter whose first book, the nonfiction "Ordinary Daylight," chronicled his experience losing his vision from an inherited eye condition.

• "The Compost-Powered Water Heater" (Countryman Press, $16.95) is a guide to using compost as a heat source. The book is written by Gaelan Brown, a fourth-generation Vermonter who lives in the Mad River Valley. Brown is the founder of CompostPower.org. He has taught classes in using compost to generate hot water at Yestermorrow, the design/build school in Waitsfield.

The book's cover comes with a blurb from environmental activist Bill McKibben, who writes: "Of the humble things that might save this imperiled planet, compost is near the top of the list. When you read this guide, you'll understand why — and maybe you'll get off the pot and start working on it!"

• A professor at Vermont Law School, Jennifer Taub, is the author of "Other People's Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business" (Yale University Press, $30).

"Focusing new light on the similarities between the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and the financial crisis in 2008," the book cover says, "Taub reveals that in both cases the same reckless banks, operating under different names, failed again, while the same lax regulators overlooked fraud and abuse."